Cooperative path planning for leader – follower formation of Multi UAV based on the minimum energy consumption for load transportation

Abstract

Today, unmanned aerial vehicles are highly considered for both military and commercial fields due to low cost, high maneuverability, and good survival. One of the most important design challenges of multi-UAV systems is mission planning. In the broad class of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), Quadrotor is an important member. The capabilities of this vehicle in load transportation has attracted the attention of many research groups around the world. In this paper, path planning based on the minimum energy consumption is studied for load transportation. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of proposed cost function in order to obtain optimal path for transporting loads based on reducing the energy consumption of quadrotors. The results indicate the 35.29% energy consumption of multi UAV compared to the energy consumption of an individual quadrotor. This also leads to an increase in load carrying capacity. On the other hand, the leader- follower formation is preserved until the end of the path based on the defined relationships. The simulation results illustrate the power and efficiency of the method to overcome the high nonlinearity nature of the problem such as path optimization of multi-rotor helicopters.